- Ghosting strikes the hiring process, as Gen-Z applicants react to unresponsive hiring managers by no longer replying to messages and sometimes not even turning up on the first day of work.
Entering an increasingly competitive job market, some Gen Zers are responding to unusual situations in atypical ways. Dealing with endless rounds of interviews, slow-to-respond employers, and an overall frustrating hiring process, a fraction of the cohort have taken to ghosting their employers back.
About a third (34%) of Gen Zers are opting to do what’s known as “career catfishing.” This means a successful candidate accepted a job and then never showed up, according to a survey of 1,000 U.K. employees conducted by CV Genius. The results found career catfishing is one of many strategies employees are using to gain more autonomy at work, including coffee badging and quiet vacationing. However, Gen Z applicants aren’t alone in going no- and low-contact during the recruiting process. Some 74% of employers now admit that ghosting is a facet of the hiring landscape, according to a 2023 Indeed survey of thousands of job seekers and employers.
At the moment, Gen Z is contending with an onerous battle to land an entry-level, full-time role. The class of 2025 is set to apply to more jobs than the graduating class prior, already submitting 24% more applications on average this past summer than seniors did last year. Furthermore, the class of 2024 applied to 64% more jobs than the cohort before them, according to job platform Handshake. To make matters all the more bleak, the number of job listings has dwindled from 2023 levels, generating deeper frenzy and more intense competition for the roles listed.
That adds up to a hiring managers’ market and senior executives are playing hardball; only 12% of mid-level executives think entry-level workers are prepared to join the workforce, per a report from technology education provider General Assembly. About one in four say they wouldn’t hire today’s entry-level employees.
Yet, that’s not really the point of entry-level roles, points out Jourdan Hathaway, General Assembly’s chief business officer. By definition, it’s a position that requires investment in a young adult, she explained.
“The entry-level employee pipeline is broken,” Hathaway wrote in a statement. “Companies must rethink how they source, train, and onboard employees.”
The especially competitive hiring landscape could be forcing Gen Zers to accept the first gig they can get because the job market is so dire—only to later regret it and not show up the first day.
That being said, simply not showing up to work could prove unsustainable in the long run. Like many young workers before them, Gen Zers have garnered a poor reputation with employers. Hiring managers have labeled them as the most difficult generation to work with, according to a Resume Genius report.
Overall, however, Gen Z shouldn’t get all the blame. Ghosting at the office has become more commonplace as of late. Three out of four employees in the U.K. say they abruptly cut off communication with a prospective employer in 2023, according to a survey from employment website Indeed. Younger generations are more likely to engage in such behavior as a way of “feel[ing] in charge of their career,” the report revealed. And gaining autonomy can prove elusive in a market with a large supply of job applicants at a time when nabbing an entry-level gig is all the more important.
Still, going no-contact with a workplace isn’t widespread at this point. Only 18% of the workforce reports engaging in such behavior, a quirk that decreases in frequency as generations age. One in four (24%) of millennials have “career catfished,” as have 11% of Gen Xers, and 7% of boomers. As for quiet departures, more than a third (38%) of Gen Zers have reportedly left a job without formally quitting, compared to 26% of millennials, 15% of Gen Xers, and 10% of baby boomers.
However, employers themselves have a role in the two-way communication—or lack thereof—between hire and hirer.
Employers ghosting
Almost 80% of hiring managers admitted they’ve stopped responding to candidates during the application process, according to a survey of 625 hiring managers from Resume Genius.
Gen Zers say that their ghosting is in reaction to the company’s behavior. More than a third of applicants who have purposefully dropped the ball say it was because a recruiter was rude to them or misled them about a position, according to Monster. Applicants without degrees say they turn to ghosting most when a hiring manager takes too long to respond, according to the job platform’s findings.
It’s gotten to the point where 75% of candidates—and 74% of employers—admit that ghosting is part of the hiring landscape, per separate surveys of more than 4,500 job seekers and employers from Indeed.
In part, it’s likely AI that’s fueling said ghosting. AI has become more integrated into the hiring process, becoming a screener that rejects resumes without ever reaching a human person’s eyes. That phenomenon possibly fuels both sides’ tendency to be non-responsive or settle for something that doesn’t feel like the right fit, potentially leading to an empty desk on the first day.
Have you “catfished” an employer recently? Or are you an employer who has been catfished? Fortune wants to here from you. Get in touch: chloe.berger@fortune.com
